46 comments:

There's something universal about the need to have the goods. The less secure you are in your own value, the more outlandish your secret knowledge has to be. This is so widespread, I don't think anyone is exempt. I'm engaging in it by writing this. This has made me so cynical that I refuse to believe in conspiracies even if they may be true. To some, it is expressly the outlandishness of their beliefs that convinces them of its truth. It is confirmation of the acuteness of their vision. This is the only explanation I can come up with for nutjobs like the Westboro nutjobs.

I feel sick to my stomach after watching that. I have someone I love very much serving in Afghanistan and I think if I would be there I would've gotten arrested. What a sick sick bunch of haters. To hate gays , soldiers and anyone who disagrees with them that much is mind boggling.

I think the anti-WBC protestors need to find someone who's great at Photoshop and make a picture of Margie Phelps and one of her daughts having sex with each other. Think of how wrong it would be on so many levels!

Thanks, Chip S. I have a lot of respect and sympathy for the police. They do their best to keep peace while citizens are pushing up against many lines. I try to comply without giving up any of my rights.

"To hate gays , soldiers and anyone who disagrees with them that much is mind boggling."

Don't let your emotions cloud your judgment; that's exactly what the Phelps colony is trying to incite. Theirs is not a theological scheme, but a revenue-generating one. I'd be surprised if they even really believed in God. Their purpose is to make money off of litigation stemming from any incidents they cause with their calculated provocations, all of it tax-exempt since they're a "church".

Hate is not the motivation. Religious doctrine is not the motivation. Money is the motivation.

Edutcher, I can't be sure, but I think that, at the time, protesting at Matthew Shepard's funeral got them the most publicity they had ever received up to that point.

For a while, it seemed that they were just picking funerals at which their would be media -- the funeral of Fred Rogers, for instance. I seem to recall them protesting (or just threatening to protest at) at the funerals for four or five college students who died in a fire in a college town in western Wisconsin.

And then they hit on the idea of protesting at military funerals. That was a big attention draw for a while. Seems less so, as time has drawn on and people have become more savvy in response to the Phelps clan.

The common thread between the Westboro gang and the extreme left wing protestors seems to be their hatred of those they believe to be wrong. We've seen where that leads at the extreme--mass extermination

A string of numbers: But the public is already against their point of view. And whatever tiny sliver is not, covering Westboro will not change anything.

Most people in America are straight (and conservative) and haven't had any firsthand experience with the bad things which can happen to gay people. The Westboro Baptist Church gets these people to take off their blinders. It literally groups them with gays and calls them "faggots" and "fag lovers".

Things which might used to have been something to joke about suddenly become serious, and characteratures become feeling people.

"… The Westboro Baptist Church gets [straight and conservative Americans] to take off their blinders…"

I could not possibly disagree more.

Westboro publicly rejoices in the destruction of the World Trade Center, IED deaths, etc. This is provocation; designed to enrage, not enlighten — and if you scan this thread (or others) you'll see that this is indeed the effect it has.

Not only that, Westboro is leveraged by progressive and anti-religious groups to smear everything to the right of them. Not sure how familiar you are w/Europe, but many there see Westboro coverage and accept that it's manifesting a significant trend in the American population, instead of being the isolated cult that it is.

Westboro has become a brand name for hatred, and with each new article/post, its brand equity increases.

We need to cut off its oxygen, instead of being, in effect, its collaborators.